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Syn raised its plethora of heads like the feathers of a peacock’s tail, splayed wide in full brilliance before all the sea. It roared a fountain of flames from every set of jaws, each plume even higher and more grandiose than the cerulean fountain that the fisherman had tamed and transformed only minutes ago.
The Dangler soared in and out among the necks of the dragon, hacking off heads left and right with an ungodly arsenal of waveglass weapons that he summoned into existence with scarcely a moment’s thought. Encouraged by the unrelenting rain and the sight of the moon eclipsing the sun, he created his frozen armaments ever larger and more elaborate: javelins, halberds, broadswords, maces, overflowing war-hammers of solid, translucent, turquoise glass, stronger than stone. He launched them all recklessly through the sky, knowing he was sure to hit any number of writhing necks in every direction. The fisherman bellowed in fury as he fought, knowing he had found the third wishing well too late, knowing he was doomed to another thousand years of sorrow and madness before he could try again.
Every head he cut away grew three more, every tail he hewed off forked anew from the splice, growing twice as sharp. A hundred heads stretched out to meet him; a minute more, three again for each of those. The Dangler’s arms spun like windmills, scooping up one blade after the last. When he saw a gaggle of heads before him all in a row, he hefted a jousting lance as big as a battering ram from the water where the stingray’s backbone would have been. The ray faltered and lost speed like a stallion kicking loose a horseshoe, but the Dangler held the waveglass lance level and drove it splintering and splashing through as many of the hydra’s heads as he could manage before the weapon melted away.
His victory was short-lived, the tide of the battle overwhelmingly against him. He was well above the clouds and Syn had spread its unlimited essence into an ocean of fire above the sea. The Dangler knew he would not be able to dive to safety when his waveglass steed finally melted away—Syn would toast him to a crisp if he fell freely through the air. In futile rage he wrenched an enormous whip out of the water inside the stingray as if he had pulled out the liquid spine of his steed’s tail. The leviathan shrank, having sacrificed so much of its volume for the fisherman’s unceasing assault on Syn; soon its wings were barely large enough for the Dangler to stand astride on. Crouching down like he was surfing on a single piece of driftwood, the fisherman cracked the tail-length, waveglass whip like a fearless lion-tamer, forcing a hundred hungry flames to back away.
A seemingly infinite horde of reptilian heads rose up to circle their prey. The Dangler cracked the whip again, but Syn was no longer startled by the deafening snap. The fisherman flung the remainder of the weapon away with no further recourse. All he could see was an ocean of fire and the heavens up in smoke. A thousand years, his beloved had said. He touched his heart, sensing the end had come at last, and he felt a quiver, though it was not his own. “The eggs!” he cried; his hand was on the satchel, still strung around his neck like an apron. The enchanted eggs were shaking like angry fish. He had forgotten all about them in the midst of the fray!
In a heartbeat he pulled the two blue eggs out of the scrip. He held them high over his head with one hand like a conductor stilling his musicians before the symphony begins. When he brought the eggs crashing down the sapphire shells shattered on the stingray’s frozen skin, but the fisherman thrust the unborn spirits of Syn’s brethren inside his steed.
Instantly the ray’s waveglass wings rippled out and stiffened with new life. The torso ballooned, the tail regenerated. Inside the leviathan’s body the twin spirits of Syn raced after one another in a circle, one pulling, one pushing, forming a single, infinite loop that gushed out pure water like the sun shines light.
The Dangler ripped back on his fishing line, pulling the revitalized stingray into a climb above the clouds. Below him, the ocean of fire rippled inward and gathered into a demon of ten-thousand heads. The Dangler urged the stingray on, leaning into a wide circle, drawing the hydra into a chase. Syn wheeled around in pursuit, chasing the barbed tail of the stingray even as the leviathan flew around behind the great dragon, until it was impossible to say who was hunting whom.
Infused with the pulsing power of a pair of primordial spirits, the waveglass ray grew twice as fast as Syn could spread its wild fire. The Dangler veered his steed left, then right again in a semi-circle, curling back in a vast figure-of-eight. He passed under the hydra at their first intersection, over at the next, pressing for more speed, more power, flying in a blurring circuit, a ray of blue water racing the red dragon, a ray of light.
Just before impact the Dangler jerked back on the reins, causing the stingray to pull up with its wings fanned out like an open palm ready to catch a ball. Without slowing, Syn crashed headlong into the leviathan’s grasp, but the fisherman allowed the perfect amount of leeway in the makeshift leash so that the water absorbed the cataclysmic charge of fire without bursting apart. Obeying a flick of the fisherman’s smallest finger, the colossal stingray closed its wings around the red dragon, curtains drawn at the close of a show.
The fire was snuffed out of the sky with a loud hiss, wet fingers pinching a candle out. Ten-thousand candles. A scarlet light could scant be seen through the layers of waveglass that constricted the hydra. The Dangler wiped a melting bead of waveglass from his brow and took a well-earned deep breath.
And then the moon rolled away from the sun.
IV. To Fall
The sun blazed forth in resplendent glory, as red as a beating heart. The inextinguishable dragon roared in righteous fury from the confines of the stingray’s folded wings. The Dangler urged his steed to hold fast, to squeeze tighter, to compress the monster to glittering ash just as Silver’s diamond mist had destroyed the bone claw hand of Sorid in the Secret Stream, but the unborn brethren of Syn could not contest the power of a demon that had a heart of its own. Yet enclosed, Syn drew on the full power of the sunlight that shone through the waveglass walls of its prison—the core of all fires flared and burned white-hot, gushing out blinding plasma like an overflowing wheelbarrow.
When Syn reared up and broke through the leviathan’s choking hold, the hydra’s three branching bodies and innumerable heads and limbs merged into one all-powerful force of nature. Syn stretched its wings from horizon to horizon. It lashed its forked tail against the surface of the sea like a kettle drum. It stretched its head up to empty space. With talons like red-hot iron the great dragon grabbed the wings of the waveglass stingray and tore them off like a cruel child torturing a butterfly. With soldering jaws it bit the head and tail off the leviathan and flung the rest of the leaking body away.
The torso of the wingless, headless stingray flew through the air, bleeding water out both nearly-pinched-shut ends. The Dangler saw the unborn spirits of Syn gush out of the broken ray’s body and stream away into the sky, flowing from one drop of rain to the next, fading away like a cold breath in the wind.
The Dangler popped to his feet on the falling pillar of frozen water, running in place to keep his balance like he was on a spinning log in the water. He ran so fast the waveglass rolled through the air, a carpet unfurling beneath his feet, but as he took each stork-like stride forward the frozen carpet unrolled in the opposite direction, carrying him backwards. In front of him, the unrolled surface cracked like a frozen lake and fell away.
Above, Syn stared at the open sea and the green lands beyond as if deciding which one to eat first, then it lifted its soulless, white-hot eyes to the sky, perhaps wondering whether it could reach up and eat the moon, when it saw the comet. The great dragon stared with a seething intensity at the shooting star, perceiving the last and only real power that might stand a chance of halting the spread of the fire. Syn reared back to strike a deadly blow.
The Dangler saw the threat to the comet. He reached under his hat and pulled out the pink petal he had taken from Astray an hour past, hooked it to his fishing line, and cast it as high as he could.